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Steve Austin
Colonel Steven 'Steve' Austin'Austin's full first name, Steven, is confirmed on a sign entering Ojai seen in "The Bionic Woman Part 1" is the primary protagonist of Martin Caidin's ''Cyborg series of novels and the television series spinoff of these books, The Six Million Dollar Man. After a near fatal plane crash, Steve Austin became the world's first bionic man. Childhood Steve Austin was born February 5, 1942. His father, Carl, was a captain in the US Army Air Force, commanding a DC-3 nicknamed My Little Girl. While on a top-secret courier mission over the Himalayas, his plane was attacked by Japanese fighters. It was reported that Carl Austin bailed out of the plane and left the crew to die (Steve eventually learned it was his co-pilot, Christopher Bell, who fled the plane.) Steve’s mother, Helen, later married Jim Elgin, who brought the family to a ranch in Ojai, California and formally adopted Steve as his son. Steve excelled at athletics, but also possessed a strong scientific streak. Fascinated by airplanes and flying, he cajoled his parents into letting him get a pilot's license before he could drive a car. He joined Army ROTC in high school to earn money for college and fell in love with local girl Jaime Sommers, but their relationship ended when Steve left for college. While at college, he roomed with future recording star John Perry, and even wrote some songs he claimed would make John famous if he recorded them. In college he was outstanding in football, but turned down offers to join the pros in favor of graduate school. Steve earned masters degrees in aeronautical engineering, geology and history, and occupied what little spare time was left him with programs in wrestling, judo, aikido, gymnastics, and fencing. After college, Steve spent a year in Vietnam flying a helicopter gunship, but was shot down (breaking three of his ribs) and sent back to the U.S. to recuperate. He took the opportunity to transfer to the Air Force to fly jets. He commanded a wing of F-111 fighter-bombers, then was assigned to Edwards Air Force Base in California, where he became one of their top test pilots. He also met Doctor Rudy Wells, who quickly became one of Steve's closest friends. Early Career The reputation Steve earned at Edwards made him very attractive to NASA, who recruited him for the astronaut program. Even among the competitors of the astronaut corps, Steve stood out as the youngest astronaut, along with a combination of sheer genius, athletic ability and ladies'-man magnetism. It was at this time that he became seriously involved with Barbara Marsh; he and Barbara were engaged for a time, but his commitment to NASA ended the relationship. Steve was selected as backup mission commander on Apollo 17, the final lunar landing. When the primary mission commander broke his arm in a car accident two weeks before the launch, Steve was promoted to commander of the prime crew. At 12:53 a.m. on December 7, 1972, Apollo 17 launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida. Four days later, Steve landed his lunar module on the Moon; he carried out a series of successful experiments and even set the record for longest single moonwalk at seven hours, thirty-seven minutes. When Apollo 17 returned from the Moon on December 17, 1972, Steve Austin was a celebrity. (Note: the second telefilm pilot, Wine, Women and War identifies Austin's ship as Apollo 19.) After making the obligatory rounds of talk shows and special appearances, Steve returned to Edwards AFB. He was anxious to return to space, but the next round of missions aboard the Skylab space station were already spoken for. NASA wanted him for a rotation aboard Skylab II, but Steve set his sights on the Space Shuttle, and quickly became chief design officer and chief test pilot of the M3F5, a lifting body prototype designed to test a spacecraft's ability to reenter atmosphere and land like an airplane. The test flight began well. The M3F5 detached from its carrier B-52, ignited its engines and brought Steve Austin to the edge of space. He piloted the ship back into the atmosphere and to the runway back at Edwards, but a crucial component of the M3F5's steering system blew out, and the ship crashed to the desert floor. Steve Austin survived, but barely. His right arm was torn off by the twisting forces of the crash, which also crushed his legs. A fragment of metal penetrated the front of his flight helmet, shattered his jaw and destroyed his left eye. His ribs were crushed, a heart valve was damaged, and his skull was fractured. Rudy Wells, who was present at the test, had Steve rushed to the base medical center and supervised hours of surgery. Steve was kept in electrosleep to allow his body to recuperate and to spare his mind the horror of his injuries. While Steve slept, Rudy Wells was approached by Oliver Spencer of the Office of Scientific Intelligence. OSI's director, Oscar Goldman, had long sought to create a cyborg, a melding of man and machine through the new science of bionics. Working with the Bionics Research Laboratory in Colorado Springs, he had the technology; now all he needed was the right man. Steve Austin was the perfect candidate. Spencer convinced Rudy Wells that bionics were Steve's best hope, and offered to pay six million dollars to make it happen. As later explained in , Spencer ostensibly got this money through the political efforts of Oscar Goldman. He had influenced Senator Ed Hill to get emergency Congressional authorization for the funds without having to specify what the money was going to be used for. The next several months were difficult. When Steve was revived from electrosleep and learned of his condition, he attempted suicide. Rudy Wells knew that while Steve's physical condition had stabilized, his emotional state was delicate. He spent hours explaining bionics to Steve, using the astronaut's scientific curiosity and engineering genius to draw him out of his shell. After months of discussion and education, Steve agreed to the surgery. He was given a new eye, an arm and both legs. The recuperation process was long and difficult. The months it took for Steve to use his new limbs easily and safely took a heavy toll on his self-esteem. After a long period of testing and refining, Steve learned that OSI planned to use him as a special agent on missions too dangerous for normal agents and too specialized for regular military. His first mission was to rescue an Israeli sympathizer from Arab insurgents; Steve was captured and learned that his objective had been shot trying to escape months before. Steve was able to escape after destroying the insurgent base. '''BIONICS OSI Career Returning to the United States, Steve came under the direct supervision of Oscar Goldman. Their relationship was strained at first; Steve chafed at being obligated to OSI, and Oscar treated Steve as a machine. It took many months before the two began to thaw towards one another, aided in part by a mission where Steve protected Oscar from assassins. Eventually, the two became close friends. Steve Austin retained his rank and pay in the Air Force, officially listed as an advisor to OSI. In reality, he was their top agent, traveling the world and using his unique skills on behalf of the American government. Known code names Primary *Sneezy ( and others) Mission-specific * Blue Sparrow ( , assigned by USAF) * Operator 1 ( , assigned by OSI when posing as a telephone worker) Further space travel Austin's career with the OSI took him back into space on several occasions after his bionic operation. In the Bionic Woman episode "Doomsday Is Tomorrow", which aired concurrent with the fourth season of The Six Million Dollar Man, it is revealed that Austin is traveling on the NASA space station Skylab for undisclosed reasons (thereby rendering him unavailable to help Jaime Sommers prevent the activation of a doomsday device). During the fifth season, Austin returned to the moon for the two-part adventure "Dark Side of the Moon". Family Other than his parents, discussed above, and Jaime Sommers, who eventually becomes his wife, Austin is known to have had at least one child, Michael Austin, born sometime in the early-to-mid 1960s. Michael would eventually become a test pilot like his father and, ultimately, undergo advanced bionic reconstruction after an accident similar to that experienced by his father. Later rebuilds and upgrades Steve Austin underwent several upgrades and/or rebuilds during his career. For example, in The Return of the Bionic Woman, an Achilles heel-like incident incapacitated his legs (and bionic system), requiring Wells to rebuild his legs and requiring Austin to spend several weeks rehabilitating and retraining himself. In the reunion movie Bionic Ever After? Austin's bionic eye works differently than seen in the series (suggesting an off-camera upgrade occurred prior to the film) and it is also suggested that he later received an upgrade to his systems. Silver bracelet In Seasons One through Three, Steve was seen sporting a shiny, metallic bracelet which may or may not have been a POW/MIA bracelet, which were popular in the 1970s--especially among U.S. servicemen. By Season Four, the bracelet was gone. Miscellaneous Although usually clean-shaven, for a period of time (beginning in "The Return of Bigfoot", Austin sports a mustache. The mustache disappears after the episode "The Privacy of the Mind". References Austin, Steve Austin, Steve